Memorial Day weekend and the end of sports season...

We had a very busy Memorial Day weekend. We headed out Friday morning at nine for Glenwood (yes, we pulled the kids out of school - Garrett was very excited that he was getting to "skip" school.) Cousin Brooke came with us too. I think spending time with her was the boys' favorite part of the whole trip. We got to the hotel around 1:00 pm and then headed over to the Glenwood cemetery to plant flowers and wait for Sonya and her family to arrive. The cemetery there is always so beautiful and peaceful. We spent an hour or so there and then headed back with John, Sonya and the kids for pizza dinner. The next day was beautiful and we headed out the cemetery again (after an awesome breakfast at the cafe at the Shady Tree Inn). I couldn't believe it but ALL of Quinn's brothers and sisters made it. They haven't all been together in one place at one time in over 5 years! It was great. We spent a few hours together and then had to head out.



When we got home we headed out to a few local spots to take senior pictures for Brooke. They turned out beautifully.


This week was also the end of soccer and baseball for the boys. They both had great seasons. Nathan played with older kids, on a bigger team and a much larger field. The loved getting to play forward but his sweet spot is midfield. He did great and had so much fun with the new team. Garrett played his first year of coach pitch baseball and loved it. He wasn't a big fan of the T. He is a slugger. He makes contact on the first or second pitch every time. Today he sent one way over the second baseman's head far into the outfield. His favorite position to play is third base. He loves when he gets to throw the ball all the way to first. Part of me is sad that spring sports are over but I'm SO happy that our weekends are free now for camping!!! We're heading to Fish Lake the weekend of the 12th, and back to Glenwood for fishing on Father's Day weekend.



And...we FINALLY got the new sport court in!!! YAY!!!! It turned out even better than we expected. We still need to get the fence put up and some fill dirt and bark work done around the borders of the court but it is awesome. The boys love it. Yesterday and today they spent the entire afternoon going back and forth between basketball and the water slide. What a GREAT weekend.


Nathan also had a solo in the 5th grade concert this week - "Oh Susanna"! He did GREAT! He wasn't nervous and belted it out perfectly and in tune!

A beautiful day...

We all slept in. Late breakfast. Sunny morning. Doesn't get any better than that!

Nathan had a flag football game at 1:00 pm. The game ended in a tie, but shouldn't have...long story! Nater had some good plays and it was a really fun game to watch.

Afterward, Quinn headed to Finaughty's with the guys for a quick beer while the boys and I played basketball in the sunshine and ate chocolate chip cookie dough!

Then, to cap off a wonderful, beautiful day, we went fishing again at the trout pond behind the police station. Nathan caught a HUGE one. And, believe it or not, Garrett did not cry from jealousy (as he did the day before when Nater won a fishing rod at the fishing derby) he was truly happy for Nathan and is sure he'll catch a big one tomorrow (which I hope he does or I'm sure the tears will come!).

Home for pizza dinner, then root beer floats and popcorn during Hotel for Dogs! A wonderful, wonderful day. Life is good...

Highlights from a busy week....

Nathan and his team won Battle of the Books at CVES for the second year in a row - two time champs!!! They'll get to compete against the other elementary schools in the district on Friday. He and his friends have worked really hard for this. I hope they do well.

Garrett had his first baseball game of the season. He got a hit every time up to bat. The coach put him at 3rd base because he's the only one that can throw the ball all the way to first. He had two GREAT stops, tagged third, and then hauled it all the way across to first base. It was beautiful.

Nathan had soccer games on Thursday and Saturday. They won both and Nathan played great. They are undefeated so far and lovin it.

We got approval from the ROA to put in the sport court and work begins on Wed. The boys are psyched!

As we do every year, we woke up at 6:00 am Saturday to go to the Snoqualmie Fishing Derby. The NW Hunt and Game club stocks the trout pond behind the police station and opens it up to fishing for 6-14 year olds. Both Nathan and Garrett caught their 2 fish limit within 20 minutes. Garrett caught the biggest fish of the four but unfortunately he did not win for his age group. Nathan did and won a new fishing rod. This led to massively hurt feelings for his little brother who was sure that someone just forgot to put his name on the winner's board. Many, many, many tears! It was heartbreaking. In between sobs he said "I want to be happy for my brother, but I just caaaaaaan't!"

I'll get all the pics posted tomorrow!

Mea culpa...

I have a new found respect the hard work and commitment it takes to maintain a blog. I guess I should say "regularly" maintain a blog. Or, I guess I mean routinely maintain an interesting and CURRENT blog. I read several blogs regularly and realized that I obviously take for granted all of the work they put into it.

That said....

Here is what we've been up to over the last month (or two!).

BASKETBALL:

This is the boys' favorite sport by far. They both did great this season. Nathan's team played up a few levels. They had to play hard every single game. Playing in this league meant to was able to play with all of his friends vs. the random team placement of the local rec league. He had a blast!

This was Garrett's first season of basketball and he did great. Took a while to get the hang of it but once he did he was insane. My favorite was when they'd get the ball on offense Garrett would haul down to the other end of the court, stand right under the basket with his hands in the air and scream "PASS" "PASS" at the top of his lungs.

The boys are totally hooked now. They loved it so much that Quinn picked up a basketball hoop for them at Costco. They play out there rain or shine every day after school and for hours on the weekend. We don't have the best driveway for basketball because of the slope, so we're putting a sport court in at the front corner of our property. I can't wait. The kids are going to love it! Perfect timing for summer.

SNOWBOARDING:

Quinn went on the annual Corbis catskiing trip in Fernie. The conditions were even better this year and the group of guys he went with were really fun. He loved it. He also made it to Sandpoint with his buddies.

Conditions locally this winter have been hit or miss. Quinn and the boys haven't been up as much as they'd like. These are pictures of Garrett's first snowboarding trip ever. He got a new snowboard from Santa and had to wait over two months to get up to the mountain. He's a pro. We did get to go up tubing this year though. I love it. Q and Rian in Sandpoint

Nater tubing!

I love this pic. The guys on the chairlift in Sandpoint.

Gater tubing!


FLAG FOOTBALL:

Quinn is coaching Nater's 5th/6th grade flag football team. We lucked out and all of his friends that signed up are on his team. Our families are all really good friends which will make for a fun season, especially when the weather warms up!

SOCCER:

Nathan chose spring soccer over baseball this Spring. Baseball's way too slow for him. He likes the fast paced games much better. He gets his baseball fix by helping out with Garrett's baseball team. His first soccer game is this Saturday.

BASEBALL:

This is Garrett's second season of baseball. He's on the Diamondbacks again. We had our first practice yesterday and he did great. He's a slugger. He's also the joker on the team. They only get two more practices and then it's straight to games. Should be interesting. Especially since we've moved to coach pitch!

TRIPS:

I went on my annual trip to Lake Chelan for Scrapfest, a three day scrapbooking crop at Memories by the Lake. I look forward to this every year; and even though this trip was interrupted by a massive migraine I still had fun. I got over a dozen pages done and won a $100 gift certificate so overall a great trip. Here are a couple of my favorites...



We also spent a few days at Great Wolf Lodge during Spring Break. Always fun.

Quinn travelled for work a lot over the last few months; but he's hopefully done for a while until a trip to New York this summer.

MISCELLANEOUS:

The boys were hit with a nasty, knock you down flu in March. The real flu. High fever for days, coughs, aches and pains. Nathan had a three year perfect attendance record going. He was SO bummed he had to stay home. Garrett on the other hand was begging to stay home even when he started feeling better. He'd much rather stay home with Mom.

Superman is in the house!

A couple videos of Nater and his friend Drew dunking in the backyard...

Snowboarding

A few pics of the boys' first snowboarding trip of the season. They've both been dying to get up. The conditions have been horrible this year and Nathan chose to play basketball instead of doing the snowboarding bus. So, between busy schedules and not enough snow in the mountains we didn't get up to the Pass until February. Garrett got a snowboard from Santa this year so this was his first attempt ever. He was so excited. He did GREAT!!!!! By the end of the first hour he was making turns and had mastered stopping. Granted the incline was pretty flat but his confidence was awesome. He was begging to go on the chairlift! We did the magic carpet for about 2 hours while Nater rode Little Thunder (and by "we" I mean Quinn - I was taking pictures!) We took a break and Garrett and I went into the Lodge for dinner while Quinn and Nathan went on one of the longer runs. Then Nater joined us in the lodge while Quinn took a few runs at his speed. We had a blast and the boys begged to stay longer. We're going over to Mission Ridge next weekend so they won't have to wait long to go again.

I wanted Arizona to win...

Our week was pretty busy. Lots of activities for the boys, plus Quinn was in New York for two days. He hates travelling so he squeezes as much business into as few days as he can. It was a successful trip for him...but we're glad he's back.








Yesterday was another crazy busy basketball day. Luckily only two games though. Gater at 8:30, then Nater at 1:30 but all the way out in Edmonds. The Rebels did great and hit half time tied 10 to 10. They lost but this was definitely our best and closest game. Nathan had a really cool in the air defensive play toward the end of the game and played really hard. Even better, the school had a huge and very cool kinda old school playground in the back - they even had a merry go round...so awesome. Since we were already in the north end we met Grandpa Steve and Grandma Kay for dinner at Red Robin. We even ran into Lisa Barry and her mom. We had fun!

Garrett and I went on our annual shopping trip to the Bellevue Arts store with Grandma today...but made it home in time for the Superbowl. Garrett picked out some fun toys (even though we were there for art supplies - he did buy some clay). BUT, then he saw the holiday decorations section (all 75% off) and he was NOT leaving without buying the huge snowman hot cocoa dispenser. It was originally $80 and we got it for $20 but man it's huge, and all my Christmas stuff has already been put away. Where am I gonna put this thing!

A long but AWESOME basketball day

Such a long but great day of basketball. We started with bball pics for Garrett in North Bend, then his game at CVES, followed by a double header in Federal Way for Nathan. Pictures were insane as usual but considering how many kids they have to handle it was pretty organized chaos. Garrett's game was a blast. He's starting to pick it up. He was good at getting open under the basket and yelling "I'm open" or "Pass it". So cute! He struggles a bit staying on his guy though on defense. Getting better each game.



Nathan wasn't feeling so hot today but played GREAT in both games this afternoon. As I've mentioned before the boys stepped up about two levels to play in the AAU division this year. Each game is really, really tough. We have not only not won a game so far this season but we've been beat in the double digits every time. These boys still play like it's the championship game. They never get down and play hard every second. Every parent on our side of the bleachers is so proud. Nathan had his "intense" game on today. He was scrappin and fouling and running like crazy. He was on the floor a few times and had some great rebounds. He was at the line once and dropped both shots in. So pretty. I'm so crazy proud of all our boys.

Here are the pictures I promised yesterday from Garrett's Star Student of the Week celebration. Too cute!




We have NOTHING on our schedule for tomorrow. I'm hoping I can stay in my pajamas ALL DAY! I'm pretty sure Quinn will since he's up at Finaughty's tonight with the guys! He'll be hurtin in the morning. :)

Star Student of the Week

I spent the morning at Garrett's school today because he was Star Student of the Week. We had so much fun. Last weekend we made an All About Me poster that hung in his classroom all week. Then this morning Garrett got to bring in his favorite snack (fruit kabobs), his favorite toy (his electric guitar) and his favorite book for Mom to read to the class (Once Upon a Spongebob). After the story and fruit kabobs, Garrett played his guitar for the class while they did freeze dance. SOOOO cute. I'll post the pictures tomorrow. We have three more basketball games tomorrow so I'll have yet more bball pics as well. We rented City of Ember for our movie party tonight and I highly recommend it. We all loved it.

It was a busy week, a busy day and a late night. Off to bed!

Slacker....

It's funny...I've been meaning to post for over a week but every time I sit down at the computer I think about something that's coming up in the next day or so and that I could have new pictures to post. So then I end up putting it off. Oh well! I'm so glad our lives are finally back to near normal now that the snow is gone and the rain has stopped. This was the kids' first full week back at school since before Christmas break. Now that we're back on track...time to catch up.

We celebrated New Years Eve with a group of good friends here in the neighborhood. The party was hosted by the Fowlers. So much fun! Great food and LOTS to drink. Shots of JD on the deck for Quinn, and shots of amazing espresso for me. Ken mixes a mean doppio espresso (he bought his wife Erin a very cool new machine for Christmas). I'm secretly hoping ours breaks now so I can get one. The gallon of JD the boys shared on the deck was a bit much for some of them! Pretty funny. The best part of the night was definitely the Karaoke machine. I have a killer video of our friend Armand doing a niiiiice version of GNR Sweet Child of Mine. So awesome. I've promised not to post it anywhere online! :)


On New Years Day we finally had our Grigg Christmas Eve celebration. Unfortunately we were minus the Southend Griggs (we missed you!). Good food, plenty of beer, wine (and of course COFFEE) and lots of football. We also had a blast playing Rock Band II - even Stuart! When my cousin Aleesha was younger we used to get together on New Years to celebrate her birthday (she's New Years baby) and watch the bowl games. Remember when the major bowl games were all on NY's day? I miss that! But we haven't celebrated that way in a while. Aleesh is 29 now - so it's been a long while. I didn't realize how much I missed it.

The Rebels had another game last weekend. They get better every game. It's been tough though because we keep losing boys to injuries. We've had a knee injury, broken wrist and stitches.

Garrett had his first basketball practice last Monday; and has his first game tomorrow. He's so excited.

Nathan started Cub Chronicle this week. He is a reporter for the Cascade View Elementary School newspaper. His job for this edition is to write a book review. He chose the book Kal and the Amazing Anti-Gravity Machine. I love how excited he is about this. So cool.

First post since weeks before Christmas...

It all went way too fast!!! On the day after Thanksgiving when I go Black Friday shopping and we pull out the holiday decorations, Christmas feels so far away. And, I love that. I love knowing that we'll be "in the season" for weeks. I love my decorated house, the smell of cinnamon candles, the kids' infectious excitement and of course all of the pretty white lights!! But I seriously get post-Christmas blues. The weeks fly by and now it's over. Yesterday Quinn and I started by taking down the tree and everything snowballed from there. We got EVERYTHING put away and cleaned up in one day. And, now I'm sad.

Our days got pretty full as Christmas got closer (and then the snow craziness of course!!!) so I haven't posted for two weeks. So, here's what's happened...

Grandma Lorrie turned 60!! We took her to Ken's Truck Stop for breakfast. What? A loving daughter can't take her mother to a truck stop for her birthday? You wouldn't question it if you've ever eaten there. Their breakfasts are to die for (plus they have an awesome game room for the kids!).

Lots of milestone birthdays in December. We celebrated our friend Armand's 40th birthday with dinner at Gianfrancos (AMAZING italian restaurant in downtown Snoqualmie). Great food, wonderful friends, lots of drinks and a crazy blizzard outside. We ended the night at Finaughty's pub, but the power went out during our first round of drinks. The snow was blowing so heavily that I completely missed two turns and our driveway on the ride home (and I hadn't even been drinking!).

Nathan finally got the Rock Band II for Wii that he'd been waiting for since his birthday. He saved up all of his money to buy it but it didn't come out on Wii until December. We lucked out and Quinn's friend Tia at Nintendo got one of the last two in stock for us on the day it came out. THANKS TIA!!

Then of course our lives were turned upside down right before the holiday by the massive snow fall (well at least massive in my "i've lived my whole life in the NW and have never seen this much snow at once" experience). Quinn and I both made it to work when we needed to and luckily had the week of Christmas off. The kids of course loved it, every minute of it. Lots of sledding. In the beginning the snow was light and really cold which isn't great for snowballs or snowmen. But, we have a great sledding hill right down the street from our house. The snow got so deep by Christmas that the kids were able to snowboard. Pretty cool since Santa brought Garrett a snowboard for Christmas.




We celebrated Christmas with Jeff, Ginger and the boys in between snow storms at their new home in Kirkland. We had a great dinner, exchanged gifts and mostly watched the kids run around like crazy.


For the most part being housebound was pretty fun, but it snowed so hard on Christmas Eve that we couldn't get to my uncle Chris' house for our traditional Grigg family get together. This was the first time EVER that we haven't been together on Christmas Eve. We tried to make the best of it though. We went sledding, then came inside for hot cocoa. Later, I surprised the guys with a DVD slideshow I put together of pictures from 2008 - pretty cool. I missed being with family but we still had a great Christmas Eve. It did make for an early and much easier time though getting ready for Santa's visit. I'm usually up until at least 1:00 am wrapping presents and packing stockings.

Santa came...he brought Gater a snowboard with boots and bindings (SO cute!) and Nathan a trampoline. The boys got a few presents from us too - board games, DS and Wii games, new cell phones, a Spongebob guitar, snowball shooters (it was SO hard not to pull these out when the snow started to fall!), nerf guns, and more...


Now it's Sunday night, Christmas is over, and I have to get up and go to work tomorrow...so, so sad! But we've got a fun New Years Eve party on Wed to look forward to. Happy holidays!